Crowne of Blood
by User1-FlynnK
Summary: When the last heir to one of Gotham's Five Founding Families is brutally murdered, and a madman comes forward to hold the city hostage under the guise of class warfare. Batman must race against the clock to solve the mystery of her murder and stop Gotham from being plunged into a chaos that could very well tear it apart from the inside. Rated M for Graphic Violence (Posted on AO3)
1. Chapter 1 - The Zero Hour

"It's begun." The voice was raspy, thin, and above all else vile, it left lips not seen to the young girl as she whimpered in terror at her captor. A stocky man, pudgy but muscular; his body was completely shaven except for hair that was barely able to be seen sticking out from under a heavy foam latex mask that of a pig that covered his head. His arms were covered in bright blue surgical latex gloves, up to the elbow as he lays out a few crude, simple instruments.

While one hand lays out and fondles each instrument with care, the other hangs up the call he was on. A burner phone which he drops into a small tool box on the floor. The pig-headed man had no reason to be careful with the phone, he had three more just like it in the white panel van sitting in the parking garage well below where he was now.

The girl while young, a fresh nubile blonde, tempted him so. Her green eyes watch him in terrifying clarity as he listens to people behind him ransack her apartment. Oh yes, she had her own place. Her parents were rich, stupid, and careless. His gloved fingers pick up a sharply honed hunting knife, the heft of its hilt in his hand makes him bounce it against his palm before turning his eyes to the tip of the blade. A hook curved piece of surgical stainless steel, used for prying under the hide and pulling it up from its bed of muscle and sinew.

A fine tool. With a simple cloth gag in her mouth she cries and whimpers, her words come out a slur of sound that the man in front of her doesn't care to listen to. There's silence that falls through the tossed apartment as he slides the medical tray away from his prey and closes in on her, his fingers pull the gag from her mouth and he starts with her tongue. A pretty pink muscle that he wants to keep for himself.

He had to do this quickly. She would scream at any second and he didn't like screaming. The gush of warm blood floods out from the quick, tearing at slice at her supple young flesh from his blade out of her pretty young lips and onto his gloved fingers. It fills the groove of the blade and pours down over the hand guard. Tearing the muscle away he lays it aside in a small metal bowl and steps back. His expression hidden to her, and for that she was thankful, but she could see the glee in his eyes. The lustfully erotic glee before he steps in and takes her by the hair.

Bloody finger tangle with golden hair to pull her head back forcing her to whine and choke on her own crimson flow of life. The pain was immense, it was everything but she couldn't find it in herself to scream because that would only make the pain worse. So much worse. She could feel it in her throat. Blinking up at the ceiling she feels hot tears cut down her cheeks, as warm steel touches the side of her throat and moves quickly.

Her skin parts, the pain compared to the loss of her tongue is nothing in comparison. It's like a paper cut that bleeds out quickly. Her world goes dark quickly. Her breath leaves her as she feels her head go slack and lurch forward.

Mackenzie Crowne spots the pig-headed man's garishly pink face watching her one last time before she fades from existence. Her body lifeless and naked.

Her killer, the pig-headed man moves quickly, the tip of his blade swiping through the air as he guides the people in there with him, "Everything worth anything goes in the wheelbarrow, we're out of here in ten minutes."

Slicing her bindings he moves her body with uncaring force to a wall that had been prepared for this moment. It was bare, stripped of everything that had been on it. People come to his side and help hoist her up against the wall in a loose crucifixion pose. With the tip of his hunting knife, he scrawls into her taut belly, "Step One," before twirling golden hair around it to keep her head aloft. Jamming the knife into the wall above her head he moves with sureness to pull out thin, sharpened railroad spikes to drive through her palms and into the wall behind her. Keeping her arms outstretched her body on show.

Leaving her like that, he steps back and peels off his gloves as another writes with a paint brush soaked in her blood on the wall above her, "It begins here."

An email would be sent out to the Major Crimes Unit, Homicide, and the District Attorney's Offices once the body was found detailing what all of this meant. What "Step One" was, what was beginning here.

Stripping his gloves from his hands to dispose of them into his tool box and retrieve more to keep his prints from appearing anywhere else he nods, "Fifteen until her PA shows up people, we move now or never."

In moments, they were gone. The apartment looted of anything remotely valuable.

In moments after that Mackenzie Crowne's personal assistant entered her residence upon finding her door open. Ventured in quietly, fearfully only to find her dear friend and employer brutalized and robbed.

Moments after that the emails appear. All the same, all addressed to who they were sent to.

"To Captain Gordon of the Major Crimes Unit,

You will find in minutes that the murder and robbery of the last living Crowne Heiress will come across your desk. Please know that this is only the beginning. She was step one. To show you and the rest of your government ilk that you are not so untouchable anymore. We will take our power back from you by force.

This is only the beginning. Within the next fourteen hours we will have taken back our city from you; the rich, corrupted and empowered greedy one percent. There is nothing you can do to stop it. There is no one you can turn to that can help you.

This is your reckoning, long coming and deserved. This is Anarky.

Hour one starts now."


	2. Chapter 2 - 14 Hours Remain

Just once, just one time does he wish this city would let him rest and go home to Barbara and little Jim. Just the one time does he wish the city would just take a break from its chaos. But this is not that time. No, it is not. The email was taken seriously. The fact that they had gotten it so dispersed to the people they wanted to see it caused a panic, the hectic 911 call from the young Miss Crowne's PA had sent a shock wave of sudden harried worry through everyone but Gordon.

Because Gordon didn't see the Joker behind it. There was no joke to be had here. He was never so esoteric as to play with taking back power and anarchy. He wanted to cause wanton madness to cater to his own sick sense of humor. This was not his kind of joke.

No this was different and he could feel it. This was someone new... and that horrified him.

From behind his bifocals, he looks at the young seventeen-year-old girl crucified to the barren wall. Her nude body stained crimson with her own blood. There was message galore here. Painted on the wall, carved into her supple flesh, and in his hand, printed out from his work terminal. He could hear Bullock breathing heavily in the background as he tries not to lose his cheap, greasy dinner all over the crime scene floor.

The Crime Scene guys were already trying to figure out where to start their evidence and trail of events tagging. Though with all the blood they couldn't figure out where to go with that just yet, "We're wasting time. If we have fourteen hours, we've wasted twenty minutes just getting down here and staring at the body."

"Jimbo, at least she ain't grinnin'." There was that one lone upside. The Joker would tell you a time table and then completely flip it over and do everything in his power to catch you off guard. But Mackenzie Crowne wasn't grinning.

No, the look of subdued terror was frozen on her soft features. One of the men in a pale blue body suit pulls his hood and mask from his face to sigh, "I've got no idea where to start here, this alone could take the fourteen hours, trying to pin everything, point of entry, to where she was held when she was killed, there's so much blood here it's washed away footprints and... this carpet is useless to us, Lieutenants. It's washed away a lot of possible evidence here."

"She was just a kid, why in the hell was she livin' by herself?!" Bullock's thick, bravado-filled voice trembled as he asked the obvious question. This was a one bedroom apartment. This wasn't a bachelor pad her father could have brought people to. This was lived in, there were pictures, posters, the sheets were still wrinkled from where she had lain in them last. There was no possible way this was somewhere she'd come to simply screw around. Gordon would recognize that.

Bullock would have called it soon as he walked through the door.

Sure his partner was crass, but he was a good detective, "Does this feel personal to you? There's a... intimacy here that doesn't feel right. Why would she be stripped naked if this was only about class?"

Gordon's voice bounces off of the walls as silence meets him in an answer. A humming sound of Bullock mulling the possible answers in his head before a voice answers from a suddenly open window. The sounds of traffic stories below rush up to meet them as the intruder speaks in a low, gravel filled tone, "Because they wanted to embarrass her, wanted to show us that everyone comes into the world the same way."

Bullock startles, his words cut off as he brings his worn and tattered fedora down to cover his chest, pantomiming a sudden heart attack, "Jesus Christ, how long you been there?"

No answer comes back to meet him. Gordon doesn't want to turn around as he brings his left wrist up to look at the time, "We have a thirteen and a half hours left. Mayor James wants to put the city in a state of Martial Law over this... so called 'Terrorist Threat'. Branden and Loeb are chomping at the bit to unleash the Emergency Response Team onto the streets in full force, the only sane ones here are me, Dent, and... I'm guessing you."

Finally, the prematurely aging Lieutenant turns to greet their visitor. His tired green eyes land on the man clad in black and gray. A tight bodysuit stretched over obvious armor and a body built to break concrete with a solid punch. He's seen it happen. The pointed ears of the cowl and the pale whites of the eyes seeking his out don't comfort him any.

Because he can see the discomfort in them, the unease that's starting to wash through the one man that isn't supposed to feel unease or discomfort in these kinds of situations, "Have you read the-..."

Gordon's question goes unanswered as their Detective visitor uncoils himself from the window sill he was perched upon to fully enter the room, "Dent forwarded it to the secure email I gave the both of you."

Heavy footfalls squelch in the blood-soaked carpet as Batman slowly approaches, his heavy black cape flowing around his shoulders, hiding his arms from sight. In a sweeping motion, he pulls it away to show a pair of goggles held in his hands. Slipping them over his head he flicks them on and the dark room goes from platitudes of shadows and crimson light to a bright, fluorescent blue that flickers and hums in front of his pale green eyes.

Gloved hands adjust wheels faceted around the lenses as he approaches the body of the victim. Adjusting the visuals as he searches for anything other than blood. Saliva, fecal matter, urine, semen. Materials that show up in varying shades of neon hues; ranging from white to bright orange. Nothing scans. Lifting them from the bridge of his nose, he focuses on the knife marks dug into her abdomen.

"Step one," he repeats quietly to himself as his left-hand trails up over her abdomen to grip her slack jaw and straighten her face as he hunches to meet her hooded, lifeless eyes. Folding the goggles up against his chest he slips them back into their pouch before pulling out a long pair of black, stainless steel tweezers to venture into her mouth. The lack of anything to grab and pull out has him retrieving them relatively clean.

Depositing them back into their space, he uses the gloved pad of his left thumb to pull her upper lip up and peek inside of her mouth. The light too dark he reaches down and pulls up a small flashlight which he places between his teeth to peer into her open cavity. Just as he had thought. Her tongue had been cut out.

Pocketing the flashlight he and without turning to look at the watching CSI Member he points to the open bathroom, "Check for a tongue in the bathroom."

There's an audible gasp that shakes the air at the insinuation as it's interrupted by a sudden wet retch from Bullock as he makes his way towards the open window. A slight twitch of the Bat's head as Gordon steps up behind him, inspecting the cavity for himself with his own pocket light, "They cut out her tongue? Why?"

"Could be symbolic of the statement they're trying to make." His voice is softer, concerned less with hiding his identity and more with working with the clues he has at hand so far and what they can add up to.

"They?" An innocent question. Gordon is no idiot, he could do this himself if he wanted. And he knows he relies a bit much on his friend in costume, but the man standing in front of him was a better detective than anyone else in Gotham City. Probably anyone else on the East Coast combined.

"Yes, it's a group. There were at least six people in here. Although this, was the work of one man. The carvings in her abdomen, do not match the painted words above her head. Someone else did those. These," He hovers his left hand over the message scrawled into her taut flesh, indicating them fully, "These are quick, violent, hateful. Lustful. There was a sexual component to this for whoever killed her. They had to have been attracted to her when they did this-..."

"There's no tongue!" The answers come back in a yell as the Crime Scene man leans back into the room, his eyes wide, sweat beading on his brow.

"The killer took a trophy." In a sudden move, the Batman's right hand comes up to grip the blade twirled into her blonde hair to jerk it out of the wall. Blood and plaster cake the blade and he nods, confirming what he already wagered to himself, "But he left the murder weapon. A trade-off."

Bagging the blade a beeping sound radiates up from Gordon's watch and he looks down, "Thirteen hours left."

"This will be our one concession. They'll have wanted us to marvel at the first step before overwhelming us with the next move." The Bat hands the bagged blade over to Gordon and finally meets his bespectacled eyes, "This is only the beginning. This is a group, hellbent on violence and destruction. The motive is unclear. The language is far too vague for it to be truly class motivated. There would have been a treatise of everything wrong with the system that they intend to fix in the email."

"There wasn't," Gordon adds, pushing his glasses up onto his forehead to rake a hand over his face with a groan, "Christ, it never ends does it."

"No. And it never will."

The CSI Member from the bathroom comes to take the knife and draws the attention away from the Bat long enough for a hushed whisper to fill the air, "I'll be checking for security footage..."

Bullock and the other Officer look around confused, as Gordon laughs in irritation by the disappearing act, "He does that."


	3. Chapter 3 - 13 Hours Remain

The flicker of computer screens cast a light on their faces, a group of six hunkered over keyboards as fingers mash buttons and try to push their way into the annals of Anarchic history. There was a feeling of distorted glee in the room, they were finally doing something worthwhile, something that would show the world, the American Government even, that the voice of the people could not be ignored anymore.

It was ecstasy upon high.

It was terrorist delusion bordering upon religious zealotry as they worship their god of stolen information upon the glowing screens in front of them. They were insane with the thrill.

And soon everyone would feel their madness.

-  
Lowering himself down into a small well-ventilated server room his eyes scan the darkness with the aid of his tiny flashlight. Held in his tight grasp as he searches the racks of mounted computers for labels. They have them, but not in a normal sense. No whoever ran this building's tech services was a narcissistic personality who wanted to prove their usefulness and superiority to those that weren't familiar with his field by labeling them in binary code written in glittery green ink on the mounts.

Finding the one he was looking for he once again places the light between his teeth so that he can pull out a long, cell phone-like object. Pushing down on a rubber indention in the middle of it a small plasma screen extends and rotates up from the side to hover over the device held in his hand. The indentation springs up from the base to form a toggle stick, the screen is cast in the static of no-signal-snow.

But from the static stands out a series of several pulsing circles, the strongest of the circles is the one he taps with his pointer finger. Securing a lock on the signal for the wireless broadcast to the surveillance server in front of him. His eyes focus as he forces his teeth to click off the flashlight between them so he can clearly see and guides his right thumb along the toggle stick to capture a pulsing green line.

Capturing the signal's highest point, a sudden rush of encrypted code comes to greet him and he uses the fingers on his left hand to start typing through it, introducing his Trojan Horse program into the wireless feed and into the server's mainframe software. A blinking password log box pops up on the small plasma screen and he thumbs a small square that introduces the main component of the Trojan to randomize letters and numbers until they quickly find the password, "3n1gm4 C0d3".

With a sharp chuckle, he starts scrolling through the feeds until he spots the one above the elevator of the floor that Mackenzie Crowne resided in. Tapping it he rests back on his heels and views the video play, his breath a hushed gush of breeze that fogs the heated plasma read out. He spots them. A group of six. Five UnSubs wearing blue medical gowns with doll masks affixed to their heads, and one man; obviously the leader; clad in a white lab coat and a bloodied leather apron. His identifying feature, a large pink pig mask adorning his head and the red tool box clutched tightly in his left hand.

The feed flickers, cutting out and the Detective's eyes flick around to the window facing the hall to see the lights outside of the server room flicker with the feed. Something was happening. Hitting he download button next to the video he closes the device and returns it to its place on his belt before he slips out into the hallway. The management staff was there, chattering away about what had happened, having been called when Crowne was found dead in her apartment.

They freeze upon spotting the towering man in the hallway. No one got this close to him that didn't end up in jail or the hospital, "Are you okay?"

His question falls on deaf ears as a sudden rolling rumble of power runs through the air before the lights flicker off completely. Leaving them enveloped by shadows. His goggles come out once more, turning the wheels around the lenses the blue flare of light washes the room out in a much easier to see fashion. Heat signatures pick up in a bright orange, with a small window over their heads tracking their heart rate as it fluctuates their temperatures.

He moves out into the main office, crouched down as he looks outside with the rest of them to see Gotham fall into darkness. One building after another, one quadrant after another, like domino's falling in line. Standing he moves with confidence to the fire exit and slips outside to look up into the sky as the only lights visible quickly become the search lights of police helicopters and blimps dotting the skyline. The usual blood red light-polluted night skies of Gotham fall to a dark blue, no stars visible, but the light of Gotham falls dead with a humming wheeze.

He was right, the first hour was their one concession. To try to solve the puzzle before resources were steadily taken away from them. He had counted for this. He hadn't mentioned it because he didn't want Gordon to fly into a panic, because when darkness like this falls in Gotham chaos ensues.

But then with a roar, the power comes back, in a wave across the city and he smirks grimly. His anti-terrorism software was at work, automated and battling against whoever was trying to take down the power grid. That bought them some time. Not much. But enough to get their act together. And then a voice, small, but husky sounds from behind him and he turns his head to look at its owner from over his shoulder, "The phone lines are dead, Ba-Batman... there's no dial tone."

Something had to give. Something always had to give.  
-

"What the fuck is all of this? There's a backtrace in pursuit of our IP! Automated security software?! Gotham can't afford this, even if they wanted to, they couldn't!" The harried voice of the hunched over man sounds into the previously silent room. Some of its owner's compatriots were grumbling and cursing right along with him. They were running into problems left, right and center when it came to shutting down Gotham's Public Works.

"The phone lines are dead. I think the software is too busy with water and power to take care of the phone lines." The screens seize for a moment, freeze up causing sudden yells and curses pierce the air before a booming, obviously augmented voice yells out over them.

"Patience! I've counted for this, it's the Batman. Trying to protect his beloved city from the very people he seeks to oppress, my brothers and sisters!" Gloved hands fly up into the air, the owner of the augmented voice's face was hidden from them by the shadow of his red hoodie. Not far behind him the wheelbarrow full of stolen goods sits untouched, but soon to be rifled through, "He won't be able to stop us. One man's stand against us is like one man's stand against the rising morning tide. He will fall beneath us as we trample over the bodies of our oppressors!"

Silence fills the air as the voice quietly dies down. Then applause breaks out, wild, disturbed cheers fill the air as he turns to drift off into the shadows to sort through the contents of the wheelbarrow. His hands, clad in blue latex gloves dig and sort through items and stop as light glints off of the item that has stopped his mad search.

A trophy from a kill he didn't commit. But a trophy to mark the start of his war on Gotham's decadence. He lifts it from the wheelbarrow and walks into a long shaft of light from a long boarded up window to inspect the object he holds so reverentially. An award won by the father of the girl he had ordered dead, a golden face, hollow, with empty eyes looking out into nothing, attached to a block of black wood with a small plaque he didn't care enough about to read.

The golden leaf of the face shines brightly in the light, reflects off in hints of power and austere. It's the perfect image. The perfect image for him to define himself and his movement. In a quick and greedy move, he tears the face from its heavy oak stand with relative ease and turns it around. The inside of the back is a matte black over simple light weight metals. His eyes close and he pushes it flush against his face.

It fits. Almost perfectly to his features. Fits and hugs on them until he tries to speak and it falls from his face and back into his shaky hands. He'd fix that issue. It wouldn't take much. A drill, a few cheap leather straps, and it would be the perfect face for his war.

The perfect face for Anarky.


End file.
